by John Kennedy Toole
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Product Description
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning classic hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue." A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).
Amazon.com Review
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs." Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job. Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The funniest book I've ever read, 2008-11-17
I'm hoping I'll find a funnier book - life can always be a little bit better! But I'm not greedy. Between the cast of characters, each a gem, to the almost unbearable richness of the odiousness of the main character himself, to sentences like "Patrolman Mancuso's love of the motorcycle was platonically intense.", I don't know what else I could ask for. Oh, I know. Amnesia. I could ask for amnesia.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Smart, Funny, Without the Usual Conceit, 2008-10-24
The story in A Confederacy of Dunces revolves around Ignatius J. Reilly, a hypochondriac former grad student living in New Orleans with an obsession with modern culture and the Middle Ages. The book made its way to press by Toole's mother sending it to Walker Percy (author of The Moviegoer) with a request that he read her late son's work; sadly, Toole committed suicide a couple of years earlier.
Most of the book concerns the utterly unemployable Reilly's attempts to join the working world. As you can imagine, hijinks ensue, but everyone is different for having made Reilly's acquaintance. The conclusion of the book is both completely fulfilling and, considering the weirdness of many of the characters, surprisingly hopeful.
The bottom line: A Confederacy of Dunces is a great novel; parts of it made me laugh out loud, which is something of a rarity these days. And it's not funny in a conceited, "look how smart I am that I get the in-jokes" kind of way; it's just a great story about the kind of person every English major in the world is one quirk away from becoming. It's the classic tale of a person over-educated and sent into the world armed and dangerous.
A Confederacy of Dunces is readable, funny, and has something to say about the human condition. I highly recommend it.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
incredible book, 2008-10-21
funniest book i have ever read. i have recommended this book to friends and co-workers. no one is
disappointed. i have given up trying to get my original copy back. i now own one that i refuse to lend.
a true must read.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Odd, Sad, Funny, Unique and Just Plain Great!, 2008-10-19
Ignatius J. Reilly is quite an interesting character. At times, I wanted him to succeed so badly that when he finally mucks things up, I wanted to ring his neck. It's just this kind of love-hate connection to the character that made this book so funny and such a quick page-turner. The author also gets New Orleans just right, from the locations to the accents of the various characters. The dialogue is never boring, trite or hokey, it flows well and even makes the odd and dissonant Ignatius read as a flesh and blood person and not a fictional hodge-podge of opinions. A great pleasure, highly recommended...
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Hilarious, dark, brilliant, 2008-10-09
One of the funniest books I've ever read. I was giggling the entire way through. The main character, Ignatius Riley, is one-of-a-kind and unforgettable. Captures 1960s New Orleans.
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